Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome are generally considered to be the birthplaces of Western civilization.

The Western world, also known as the West, refers to various nations depending on the context, most often including at least part of Europe, Australasia, and the Americas, with the status of Latin America in dispute. There are many accepted definitions, all closely interrelated.[3] The Western world is also known as the Occident (from the Latin word occidens, "sunset, West"), in contrast to the Orient (from the Latin word oriens, "rise, East"), or Eastern world.

Historians, such as Carroll Quigley in "The Evolution of Civilizations",[14] contend that Western civilization was born around AD 500, after the total collapse of the Western Roman Empire, leaving a vacuum for new ideas to flourish that were impossible in Classical societies. In either view, between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Renaissance, the West (or those regions that would later become the heartland of the culturally "western sphere") experienced a period of first, considerable decline,[15] and then readaptation, reorientation and considerable renewed material, technological and political development. This whole period of roughly a millennium is known as the Middle Ages, its early part forming the "Dark Ages", designations that were created during the Renaissance and reflect the perspective on history, and the self-image, of the latter period.[citation needed]

There is debate among some as to whether Latin America as a whole is in a category of its own.[24] Whether Russia should be categorized as "East" or "West" has been "an ongoing discussion" for centuries.[25]

The concept of Western culture is generally linked to the classical definition of the Western world. In this definition, Western culture is the set of literary, scientific, political, artistic and philosophical principles that set it apart from other civilizations. Much of this set of traditions and knowledge is collected in the Western canon.[26]

The term has come to apply to countries whose history is strongly marked by European immigration or settlement, such as the Americas, and Oceania, and is not restricted to Europe.

The geopolitical divisions in Europe that created a concept of East and West originated in the ancient tyrannical and imperialistic Graeco-Roman times.[8] The Eastern Mediterranean was home to the highly urbanized cultures that had Greek as their common language (owing to the older empire of Alexander the Great and of the Hellenistic successors.), whereas the West was much more rural in its character and more readily adopted Latin as its common language. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the beginning of the Medieval times (or Middle Ages), Western and Central Europe were substantially cut off from the East where Byzantine Greek culture and Eastern Christianity became founding influences in the Eastern European world such as the Eastern and Southern Slavic peoples.

Roman Catholic Western and Central Europe, as such, maintained a distinct identity particularly as it began to redevelop during the Renaissance. Even following the Protestant Reformation, Protestant Europe continued to see itself as more tied to Roman Catholic Europe than other parts of the perceived civilized world. Use of the term West as a specific cultural and geopolitical term developed over the course of the Age of Exploration as Europe spread its culture to other parts of the world. Roman Catholics were the first major religious group to immigrate to the New World, as settlers in the colonies of Portugal and Spain (and later, France) belonged to that faith. English and Dutch colonies, on the other hand, tended to be more religiously diverse. Settlers to these colonies included Anglicans, Dutch Calvinists, English Puritans and other nonconformists, English Catholics, Scottish Presbyterians, French Huguenots, German and Swedish Lutherans, as well as Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, and Moravians.[citation needed]

The then Hellenic division between the barbarians (term used by Ancient Greeks for all non-Greek-speaking people) and the Greeks contrasted in many societies the Greek-speaking culture of the Greek settlements around the Mediterranean to the surrounding non-Greek cultures. Herodotus considered the Persian Wars of the early 5th century BC a conflict of Europa versus Asia (which he considered all land north and east of the Sea of Marmara, respectively).

The terms "West" and "East" were not used by any Greek author to describe that conflict. The anachronistic application of those terms to that division entails a stark logical contradiction, given that, when the term "West" appeared, it was used by Hellenistic Roman Catholic of Greek heritage but also of Latin-speaking culture, in opposition to the Greek Orthodox and their Greek-speaking culture.

According to a few writers, the future conquest of parts of the Roman Empire by Germanic peoples and the subsequent dominance by the Western Christian Papacy (which held combined political and spiritual authority, a state of affairs absent from Greek civilization in all its stages), resulted in a rupture of the previously existing ties between the Latin West and Greek thought,[29] including Christian Greek thought.

Ancient Rome (753 BC – AD 476) was a civilization that grew from a city-state founded on the Italian Peninsula about the 8th century BC to a massive empire straddling the Mediterranean Sea. In its 10-centuries expansion, Roman civilization shifted from a small monarchy (753 – 509 BC), to a republic (509 – 27 BC), to an autocratic empire (27 BC – AD 476). It came to dominate Western, Central and Southeastern Europe and the entire area surrounding the Mediterranean Sea through conquest using the Roman legions and then through cultural assimilation by eventually giving Roman citizenship privileges to the whole population. Nonetheless, despite its great legacy, a number of factors led to the eventual decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

The Roman Republic in 218 BC after having managed the conquest of most of the Italian peninsula, on the eve of major successful and deadliest war with the Phoenicians. The Roman Empire in AD 117. During 350 years the Roman Republic turned into an Empire expanding up to twenty-five times its area.

The Roman Empire succeeded the approximately 500-year-old Roman Republic (c. 510 BC – 30 BC), which had been weakened by the conflict between Gaius Marius and Sulla and the civil war of Julius Caesar against Pompey and Marcus Brutus. During these struggles hundreds of senators were killed, and the Roman Senate had been refilled with loyalists[vague] of the First Triumvirate and later those of the Second Triumvirate.[d] In 350 years, from the successful and deadliest war with the Phoenicians began in 218 BC to the rule of Emperor Hadrian by AD 117, Ancient Rome expanded up to twenty-five times its area. The same time passed before its fall in AD 476. Rome had expanded long before the empire reached its zenith with the conquest of Dacia in AD 106, under Emperor Trajan. During its territorial peak, the Roman Empire controlled about 5,000,000 square kilometres (1,900,000 sq mi) of land surface and had a population of 100 million. From the time of Caesar (100 – 44 BC) to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, Rome dominated Southern Europe, the Mediterranean coast of Northern Africa and the Western Middle East, including the ancient trade routes with population living outside. Ancient Rome has contributed greatly to the development of law, war, art, literature, architecture, technology and language in the Western world, and its history continues to have a major influence on the world today. Latin language has been the base from which Romance languages evolved and it has been the official language of the Catholic Church and all Catholic religious ceremonies all over Europe until 1967, as well as an or the official language of countries such as Poland (9th–18th centuries).[30]

Graphical map of post-AD 395 Roman Empire highlighting differences between western Roman Catholic and eastern Greek Orthodox parts, on the eve of the death of last emperor to rule on both the western and eastern halves. The concept of "East-West" originated in the cultural division between Christian Churches.[8]Western and Eastern Roman Empires on the eve of Western collapse in September of AD 476.

In AD 395, a few decades before its Western collapse, the Roman Empire formally split into a Western and an Eastern one, each with their own emperors, capitals, and governments, although ostensibly they still belonged to one formal Empire. The Western Roman Empire provinces eventually were replaced by Northern EuropeanGermanic ruled kingdoms in the 5th century due to civil wars, corruption, and devastating Germanic invasions from such tribes as the Goths, the Franks and the Vandals by their late expansion throughout Europe. The three-day Visigoths's AD 410 sack of Rome who had been raiding Greece not long before, a shocking time for Graeco-Romans, was the first time after almost 800 years that Rome had fallen to a foreign enemy, and St. Jerome, living in Bethlehem at the time, wrote that "The City which had taken the whole world was itself taken."[31] However, the Pope would be spearing slaughter and destruction by the followed sack of AD 455 lasted 14 days this time conducted by the Vandals, retaining Rome's ethernal spirit through the Holy See of Rome (the Latin Church) for centuries to come.[32][33] The ancient Barbarian tribes, often composed of well-trained Roman soldiers paid by Rome to guard the extensive borders, had become militarily sophisticated 'romanized barbarians', and mercilessly slaughtered the Romans conquering their Western territories while looting their possessions.[34]

The Roman Empire is where the idea of "the West" began to emerge. By Rome's central location at the heart of the Empire, "West" and "East" were terms used to denote provinces west and east of the capital itself. Therefore, Iberia (Portugal and Spain), Gaul (France), Mediterranean coast of North Africa (Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco) and Britannia were all part of the "West", while Greece, Cyprus, Anatolia, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, and Libya were part of the "East". Italy itself was considered central, until the reforms of Diocletian, with the idea of formally dividing the Empire into true two halves: Eastern and Western.[vague]

The dissolution of the Western half (nominally in AD 476, but in truth a long process that ended by AD 800) left only the Eastern Roman Empire alive. The East continued to call themselves Eastern Romans even after AD 610 – 800 when Greek had become official language of the empire (was Latin) and the Pope's crowning of Charlemagne as Emperor of the Romans, while the West began thinking in terms of Western Latins (those living in the old Western Empire) and Eastern Greeks (those inside the Roman remnant to the east).

The Eastern Roman Empire, governed from Constantinople, is usually referred to as the Byzantine Empire after AD 476, the traditional date for the "fall of the Western Roman Empire" and beginning of the Early Middle Ages. The Eastern Roman Empire surviving the fall of the Western, protected Roman legal and cultural traditions, combining them with Greek and Christian elements, for another thousand years. The name Byzantine Empire was used after the Byzantine Empire ended, the inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire continued to call themselves Romans for long time as the term “Roman” was meant to signify all Christians.[citation needed]

As the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (firstly Catholic, then Protestant as well) churches spread their influence, the line between Eastern and Western Christianity was moving. Its movement was affected by the influence of the Byzantine empire and the fluctuating power and influence of the Catholic church in Rome. Beginning in the Middle Ages religious cultural hegemony slowly waned in Europe generally. This process may have prompted the geographic line of religious division to approximately follow a line of cultural divide. The influential American conservative political scientist, adviser and academic Samuel P. Huntington argued that this cultural division still existed during the Cold War as the approximate Western boundary of those countries that were allied with the Soviet Union.[e]

Map of the Byzantine Empire in AD 1180 on the eve of the Latin Fourth Crusade.

In AD 800 under Charlemagne, the Early Medieval Franks established an empire that was recognized by the Pope in Rome as the Holy Roman Empire (Latin Christian revival of the ancient Roman Empire, under perpetual Germanic rule from AD 962) inehiriting ancient Roman Empire's prestige but offending the Roman Emperor in Constantinople. The crowning of the Emperor by the Pope led to the assumption that the highest power was the papal hierarchy, quintessential Roman Empire's spiritual heritage authority, establishing then, until the Protestant Reformation, the civilization of West Christendom.

The Latin Rite Catholic Church of western and central Europe split with the eastern Greek-speaking Patriarchates by the Christian East–West Schism, also known as the "Great Schism", during the Gregorian Reforms (calling for a more central status of the Roman-Catholic Church Institution), three months after Pope's death in April 1054.[36] Following 1054 Great Schism, both the Western Church and Eastern Church continued to consider themselves uniquely orthodox and catholic. Augustine wrote in On True Religion: “Religion is to be sought... only among those who are called Catholic or orthodox Christians, that is, guardians of truth and followers of right.”[37] Over time, the Western Church gradually identified with the "Catholic" label, and people of Western Europe gradually associated the "Orthodox" label with the Eastern Church (although in some languages, the "Catholic" label is not necessarily identified with the Western Church). This was in note of the fact that both Catholic and Orthodox were in use as ecclesiastical adjectives as early as the 2nd and 4th centuries respectively.

In 1071, the Byzantine army was defeated by the MuslimTurco-Persians of medieval Asia, resulting in the loss of most of Asia Minor. The situation was a serious threat to the future of the Eastern OrthodoxByzantine Empire. The Emperor sent a plea to the Pope in Rome to send military aid to restore the lost territories to Christian rule. The result was a series of western European military campaigns into the eastern Mediterranean, known as the Crusades. Unfortunately for the Byzantines, the crusaders (belonging to the members of high aristocracy from France, western Germany, the Low countries, and Italy) had no allegiance to the Byzantine Emperor and established their own states in the conquered regions, including the heart of the Byzantine Empire. Meanwhile, the extent of both Christendoms expanded, as Germanic peoples, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, Scandinavia, Baltic peoples, British Isles and the other non-Christian lands of the northwest were converted by the Western Church, while Slavic peoples, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia were converted by the Eastern Church. The Holy Roman Empire would dissolve on 6 August 1806, after the French Revolution and the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon.

Map of Byzantine Empire (pink), and Holy Roman Empire and tied states at greatest extent (yellow, green, purple and orange) in AD 1261 after the restoration of the Byzantine emperor.

Later concepts of a world of nation-states born by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, coupled with the ideologies of the Enlightenment, the coming of modernity, the Scientific Revolution[51] and the Industrial Revolution,[52] would produce powerful social transformations, political and economic institutions that have come to influence (or been imposed upon) most nations of the world today. Historians agree that the Industrial Revolution has been one of the most important events in history.[53]

Due to the reach of these empires, Western institutions expanded throughout the world. Even after demands for self-determination from subject peoples within Western empires were met with decolonization, these institutions persisted. One specific example was the requirement that post-colonial societies were made to form nation-states (in the Western tradition), which often created arbitrary boundaries and borders that did not necessarily represent a whole nation, people, or culture, and are often the cause of international conflicts and friction even to this day. Although not part of Western colonization process proper, following the Middle Ages Western culture in fact entered other global-spanning cultures during the colonial 15th-20th centuries.

In the 13th and 14th centuries, a number of European travelers, many of them Christian missionaries, had sought to cultivate trading with Asia and Africa. By start of the Crusades and relative contraction of Orthodox Byzantine's large silk industry in favour of Catholic Western European and rise of Western Papacy, most famous of these merchant travelers after the East-West trade was Venetian Marco Polo. But these journeys had little permanent effect on the East-West trade because of a series of political developments in Asia in the last decades of the 14th century, which put an end to further European exploration of Asia: namely the new Ming rulers were found to be unreceptive of religious proselytism by European missionaries and merchants. Meanwhile, the OttomanTurks consolidated control over the eastern Mediterranean, closing off key overland trade routes.

In early-19th century the systematic urbanisation process (migration from villages in search of jobs to places where factories were set up) had began, and the concentration of labour into factories led to the rise in the population of the towns particularly (world population had been rising as well, it is estimated it reached one billion for the first time in 1804),[59] while the new philosophical movement later known as Romanticism originated after the previous Reason of the 1600s and Enlightenment of 1700s, that enabled 19th century Western world's sustained economic development.[60]

Western world's major national buildings and churches by the colonial 15th–20th centuries

Before the urbanisation and industrialization of the 1800s, demand for oriental goods such as porcelain, silk, spices and tea remained the driving force behind European imperialism in Asia, and (with the important exception of British East India Company rule in India) the European stake in Asia remained confined largely to trading stations and strategic outposts necessary to protect trade.[61]Industrialisation, however, dramatically increased European demand for Asian raw materials; and the severe Long Depression of the 1870s provoked a scramble for new markets for European industrial products and financial services in Africa, the Americas, Eastern Europe, and especially in Asia (Western powers exploited their advantages in China for example by the Opium Wars),[62] and resulted in so-called "New Imperialism", which saw a shift in focus between trade, indirect rule and formal colonial control of vast overseas territories ruled as political extensions of their mother countries.[k] The later years of the 19th century saw the transition from "informal imperialism" (hegemony)[l] by military influence and economic dominance, to direct rule (a revival of colonial imperialism) in the African continent and Middle East.[66]

Cold War context (1947–1991)

During the Cold War, a new definition emerged. Earth was divided into three "worlds". The First World, analogous in this context to what was called the West, was composed of NATO members and other countries aligned with the United States. The Second World was the Eastern bloc in the Soviet sphere of influence, including the Soviet Union (15 republics including presently independent Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) and Warsaw Pact countries like Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, East Germany (now united with Germany), Czechoslovakia (now split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia).

The Third World consisted of countries, many of which were unaligned with either, and important members included India, Yugoslavia, Finland (Finlandization) and Switzerland (Swiss Neutrality); some include the People's Republic of China, though this is disputed, since the People's Republic of China, as communist, had friendly relations — at certain times — with the Soviet bloc, and had a significant degree of importance in global geopolitics. Some Third World countries aligned themselves with either the US-led West or the Soviet-led Eastern bloc.

Cold War colonial empires through decolonization. The global distribution of Christians: a darker shade means a higher proportion of Christians.[71]

A number of countries did not fit comfortably into this neat definition of partition, including Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, and Ireland, which chose to be neutral. Finland was under the Soviet Union's military sphere of influence (see FCMA treaty) but remained neutral and was not communist, nor was it a member of the Warsaw Pact or Comecon but a member of the EFTA since 1986, and was west of the Iron Curtain. In 1955, when Austria again became a fully independent republic, it did so under the condition that it remain neutral, but as a country to the west of the Iron Curtain, it was in the United States' sphere of influence. Spain did not join the NATO until 1982, towards the end of the Cold War and after the death of the authoritarian Franco.

The exact scope of the Western world is somewhat subjective in nature, depending on whether cultural, economic, spiritual or political criteria are employed. It is a generally accepted western view to recognize the existence of at least three "major worlds" (or "cultures", or "civilizations"), broadly in contrast with the Western: the Eastern world, the Arab and the African worlds, with no clearly specified boundaries. Additionally, Latin American and Orthodox worlds are sometimes separately considered "akin" to the West.

Many anthropologists, sociologists and historians oppose "the West and the Rest" in a categorical manner.[83] The same has been done by Malthusian demographers with a sharp distinction between European and non-European family systems. Among anthropologists, this includes Durkheim, Dumont and Lévi-Strauss.[83]

As the term "Western world" does not have a strict international definition, governments do not use the term in legislation of international treaties and instead rely on other definitions.

In the 20th century, Christianity declined in influence in many Western countries, mostly in the European Union where some member states have experienced falling church attendance and membership in recent years,[84] and also elsewhere. Secularism (separating religion from politics and science) increased. However, while church attendance is in decline, in some western countries (i.e. Italy, Poland and Portugal) more than half the people state that religion is important,[85] and most Westerners nominally identify themselves as Christians (e.g. 59% in the United Kingdom) and attend church on major occasions, such as Christmas and Easter. In the Americas, Christianity continues to play an important societal role, though in areas such as Canada, low level of religiosity is common as a result of experiencing processes of secularization similar to European ones. The official religions of the United Kingdom and some Nordic countries are forms of Christianity, even though the majority of European countries have no official religion. Despite this, Christianity, in its different forms, remains the largest faith in most Western countries.[86]

Western world countries also, are the most keen on digital and televisual media technologies, as they were in the postwar period on television and radio: from 2000 to 2014, internet's market penetration was twice that of non-Western regions.[91]

The term "Western world" is sometimes interchangeably used with the term First World or developed countries, stressing the difference between First World and the Third World or developing countries. This usage occurs despite the fact that many countries that may be culturally "Western" are developing countries - in fact, a significant percentage of the Americas are developing countries. It is also used despite many developed countries or regions not being Western (e.g. Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macao, Qatar, Israel), and therefore left out when "Western world" is used to denote developed countries. Privatization policies (involving government enterprises and public services) and multinational corporations are often considered a visible sign of Western nations's economic presence, especially in Third World countries, and represent common institutional environment for powerful politicians, enterprises, trade unions and firms, bankers and thinkers of the Western world.[92][93][94][95][96]

Countries by income group

The existence of "The North" implies the existence of "The South", and the socio-economic divide between North and South. The term "the North" has in some contexts replaced earlier usage of the term "the West", particularly in the critical sense, as a more robust demarcation than the terms "West" and "East". The North provides some absolute geographical indicators for the location of wealthy countries, most of which are physically situated in the Northern Hemisphere, although, as most countries are located in the northern hemisphere in general, some have considered this distinction equally unhelpful. Modern financial services and technologies are largely developed by Western nations: Bitcoin, most known digital currency is subject to skepticism in the Eastern world whereas Western nations are more open to it.[97]

Latin America and the Orthodox world

Huntington's map of major civilizations.[1] What constitutes Western civilization in post-Cold War world is coloured dark blue. He also dwells that Latin America (shown in purple) is either a part of the West or a separate civilization akin to the West. Turkey, Russia, and Mexico[98] are considered "torn countries" that are either already part of the West or in the process of joining the West.

Controversial[99][100] American conservative political scientist, adviser and academic Samuel P. Huntington considered Latin America and the Orthodox world somewhat distinct from his conception of the Western world for his geopolitical analysis.[1] However he further dwells on the subject by stating that while in general researchers consider that the West has three main components, European, North America and Latin American. In his view, Latin America has followed a different development path from Europe and North America. Although it is a scion of European civilization, it also incorporates, to an extent, elements of indigenous American civilizations, absent from North America and Europe. It has had a corporatist and authoritarian culture that Europe had to a much lesser extent and America did not have at all. Both Europe and North America felt the effects of the Reformation and combined Catholic and Protestant culture. Historically, Latin America has been only Catholic, although this may be changing due to the influx of Protestants into the region. Some regions in Latin America incorporates indigenous cultures, which did not exist in Europe, and which were effectively annihilated in North America, and whose importance oscillates between two extremes: Mexico, Central America, Peru and Bolivia, on the one hand, and Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay on the other. However, he does mention that the modus operandi of the Catholic Church was to incorporate native elements of pagan European cultures into the general dogma of Catholicism, and the Native American elements could be perceived in the same way.[101] Subjectively, Latin Americans themselves are divided when it comes to identifying themselves. Some say: "Yes, we are part of the West." Others say: "No, we have our own unique culture"; and a vast bibliographical material produced by Latin Americans and North Americans exposes in detail their cultural differences. Huntington goes on to mention that Latin America could be considered a sub-civilization within Western civilization, or a separate civilization, intimately related to the West and divided as to its belonging to it. While for an analysis focused on the international political consequences of civilizations, including relations between Latin America, on the one hand, and North America and Europe, on the other, the second option is the most appropriate and useful; he also mentions that the underlying conflict of Latin American belonging to the West must be eventually addressed in order to develop a cohesive Latin American identity.[102][103] Huntington's view has, however, been contested on a number of occasions as biased.[104][105]

Other views

A series of scholars of civilization, including Arnold J. Toynbee, Alfred Kroeber and Carroll Quigley have identified and analyzed "Western civilization" as one of the civilizations that have historically existed and still exist today. Toynbee entered into quite an expansive mode, including as candidates those countries or cultures who became so heavily influenced by the West as to adopt these borrowings into their very self-identity; carried to its limit, this would in practice include almost everyone within the West, in one way or another. In particular, Toynbee refers to the intelligentsia formed among the educated elite of countries impacted by the European expansion of centuries past. While often pointedly nationalist, these cultural and political leaders interacted within the West to such an extent as to change both themselves and the West.[24]

Palestinian-American literary critic Edward Said uses the term occident in his discussion of orientalism. According to his binary, the West, or Occident, created a romanticized vision of the East, or Orient to justify colonial and imperialist intentions. This Occident-Orient binary focuses on the Western vision of the East instead of any truths about the East. His theories are rooted in Hegel's Master-slave dialectic: The Occident would not exist without the Orient and vice versa. Further, Western writers created this irrational, feminine, weak "Other" to contrast with the rational, masculine, strong West because of a need to create a difference between the two that would justify imperialist ambitions, according to the Said-influenced Indian-American theorist Homi K. Bhabha.[clarification needed]

Map illustrations of the West according to different but closely interrelated definitions

Division of the Roman Empire after 395 into western and eastern part. The geopolitical divisions in Europe that created a concept of East and West originated in the Roman Empire.

Latin alphabet world distribution. The dark green areas show the countries where this alphabet is the sole official (or de facto official) national script. The light green places show the countries where the alphabet co-exists with other scripts.

Countries with 50% or more Christians are colored purple while countries with 10% to 50% Christians are colored pink

Map showing relative degree of religiosity by country. Based on a 2006–2008 worldwide survey by Gallup.

Relative geographic prevalence of Christianity versus the second most prevalent religion Islam and lack of either religion, in 2006.

From a very different perspective, it has also been argued that the idea of the West is, in part, a non-Western invention, deployed in the non-West to shape and define non-Western pathways through or against modernity.[107]

Views on torn countries

According to Samuel P. Huntington, Turkey, whose political leadership has systematically tried to Westernize the predominantly Muslim country with only 3% of its territory within Europe since the 1920s, is his chief example of a "torn country" that is attempting to join Western civilization.[1] The country's elite started the Westernization efforts, beginning with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who took power as the first president of the modern Turkish nation-state in 1923, imposed western institutions and dress, removed the Arabic alphabet and embraced the Latin alphabet, joined NATO, and are seeking to join the European Union since the 1960s with very slow progress.[108] Mexico and Russia are also considered to be torn by Huntington. He also gives the example of Australia as a country torn between its Western civilizational heritage and its growing economic engagement with Asia. Russia, Japan, and India also, are what Huntington terms 'swing civilizations'.

^During the Middle Ages, many attributes of Athena were given to the Virgin Mary [..] Some even viewed the Virgin Mary as a warrior maiden, much like Athena Parthenos; during the Middle Ages, Athena became widely used as a Christian symbol and allegory, and she appeared on the family crests of certain noble houses. Depictions of Athena have influenced other symbols of western freedom, including the Statue of Liberty, representing Libertas, the Roman Goddess of liberty, by Marianne, the national symbol of France. Western artists and allegorists have often used Athena as a symbol of freedom and democracy.[28]

^Several dates are commonly proposed to mark the transition from Republic to Empire, including the date of Julius Caesar's appointment as perpetual Roman dictator (44 BC), the victory of Caesar's heir Octavian at the Battle of Actium (2, 31 September BC), and the Roman Senate's granting to Octavian the honorificAugustus. (16, 27 January BC). Octavian/Augustus officially proclaimed that he had saved the Roman Republic and carefully disguised his power under republican forms: Consuls continued to be elected, tribunes of the plebeians continued to offer legislation, and senators still debated in the Roman Curia. However, it was Octavian who influenced everything and controlled the final decisions, and in final analysis, had the legions to back him up, if it became necessary.

^Others have fiercely criticized these views arguing they confuse the Eastern Roman Empire with Russia, especially considering the fact that the country that had the most historical roots in Byzantium (Greece) expelled communists and was allied with the West during the Cold War. Still, Russia accepted Eastern Christianity from the Byzantine Empire (by the Patriarch of Constantinople: Photios I) linking Russia very close to the Eastern Roman Empire world. Later on, in 16th century Russia created its own religious centre in Moscow. Religion survived in Russia beside severe persecution carrying values alternative to the communist ideology.[citation needed]

^These changes were adopted by the Scandinavian kings. Later, French commoner Jean Cauvin (John Calvin) assumed the religio-political leadership in Geneva, a former ecclesiastical city whose prior ruler had been the bishop. The English king later improvised on the Lutheran model, but subsequently many Calvinist doctrines were adopted by popular dissenters paralleling the struggles between the King and Parliament lead to the English Civil War (1642–1651) between royalists and parliamentarians, while both colonized North America eventually resulting in an independent United States of America (1776) during the Industrial Revolution.

^In the 16th century, the Portuguese broke the (overland) Medieval monopoly of the Arabs and Italians of trade (goods and slaves) between Asia and Europe by the discovery of the sea route to India around the Cape of Good Hope.[57] With the ensuing rise of the rival Dutch East India Company, Portuguese influence in Asia was gradually eclipsed; Dutch forces first established fortified independent bases in the East and then between 1640 and 1660 wrestled some southern Indian ports, and the lucrative Japan trade from the Portuguese. Later, the English and the French established some settlements in India and a trade with China, and their own acquisitions would gradually surpass those of the Dutch. In 1763, the British eliminated French influence in India and established the British East India Company as the most important political force on the Indian Subcontinent.

^Although Christianized by early Middle Ages, Ireland is soon colonised in 16th- and 17th-century with settlers from the neighboring island of Great Britain (several people committed in the establishment of these colonies in Ireland, would later also colonise North America initiating the British Empire), while Iceland still uninhabited long after the rest of Western Europe had been settled, by 1397–1523 would eventually be united in one alliance with all of the Nordic states (kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden and Norway).

^The Scramble for Africa was the occupation, division, and colonization of African territory by European powers during the period of New Imperialism, between 1881 and 1914. It is also called the 'Partition of Africa' and by some the 'Conquest of Africa'. In 1870, only 10 percent of Africa was under formal Western/European control; by 1914 it had increased to almost 90 percent of the continent, with only Ethiopia (Abyssinia), the Dervish state (a portion of present-day Somalia)[63] and Liberia still being independent.

^In ancient Greece (8th century BC – AD 6th century), hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of a city-state over other city-states.[64] The dominant state is known as the hegemon.[65]

^Ricardo Duchesne (7 February 2011). The Uniqueness of Western Civilization. BRILL. p. 297. ISBN90-04-19248-4. The list of books which have celebrated Greece as the “cradle” of the West is endless; two more examples are Charles Freeman's The Greek Achievement: The Foundation of the Western World (1999) and Bruce Thornton's Greek Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization (2000)

^Chiara Bottici; Benoît Challand (11 January 2013). The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations. Routledge. p. 88. ISBN978-1-136-95119-0. The reason why even such a sophisticated historian as Pagden can do it is that the idea that Greece is the cradle of civilisation is so much rooted in western minds and school curicula as to be taken for granted.

References

^Huntington, Samuel P. (1991). Clash of Civilizations (6th ed.). Washington, DC. pp. 38–39. ISBN978-0-684-84441-1 – via http://www.mercaba.org/SANLUIS/Historia/Universal/Huntington,%20Samuel%20-%20El%20choque%20de%20civilizaciones.pdf (in Spanish). The origin of western civilization is usually dated to 700 or 800 AD. In general, researchers consider that it has three main components, in Europe, North America and Latin America. [...] However, Latin America has followed a quite different development path from Europe and North America. Although it is a scion of European civilization, it also incorporates, to varying degrees, elements of indigenous American civilizations, absent from North America and Europe. It has had a corporatist and authoritarian culture that Europe had to a much lesser extent and America did not have at all. Both Europe and North America felt the effects of the Reformation and combined Catholic and Protestant culture. Historically, Latin America has been only Catholic, although this may be changing. [...] Latin America could be considered, or a sub-civilization within Western civilization, or a separate civilization, intimately related to the West and divided as to its belonging to it.

^Cambridge University Historical Series, An Essay on Western Civilization in Its Economic Aspects, p.40: Hebraism, like Hellenism, has been an all-important factor in the development of Western Civilization; Judaism, as the precursor of Christianity, has indirectly had had much to do with shaping the ideals and morality of western nations since the christian era.

^Middle Ages "Of the three great civilizations of Western Eurasia and North Africa, that of Christian Europe began as the least developed in virtually all aspects of material and intellectual culture, well behind the Islamic states and Byzantium."

^H. G. Wells, The Outline of History, Section 31.8, The Intellectual Life of Arab Islam "For some generations before Muhammad, the Arab mind had been, as it were, smouldering, it had been producing poetry and much religious discussion; under the stimulus of the national and racial successes it presently blazed out with a brilliance second only to that of the Greeks during their best period. From a new angle and with a fresh vigour it took up that systematic development of positive knowledge, which the Greeks had begun and relinquished. It revived the human pursuit of science. If the Greek was the father, then the Arab was the foster-father of the scientific method of dealing with reality, that is to say, by absolute frankness, the utmost simplicity of statement and explanation, exact record, and exhaustive criticism. Through the Arabs it was and not by the Latin route that the modern world received that gift of light and power."

^Lewis, Bernard (2002). What Went Wrong. Oxford University Press. p. 3. ISBN978-0-06-051605-5. "For many centuries the world of Islam was in the forefront of human civilization and achievement ... In the era between the decline of antiquity and the dawn of modernity, that is, in the centuries designated in European history as medieval, the Islamic claim was not without justification."

^Blötzer, J. (1910). "Inquisition". The Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved 2012-08-26. ... in this period the more influential ecclesiastical authorities declared that the death penalty was contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, and they themselves opposed its execution. For centuries this was the ecclesiastical attitude both in theory and in practice. Thus, in keeping with the civil law, some Manichæans were executed at Ravenna in 556. On the other hand, Elipandus of Toledo and Felix of Urgel, the chiefs of Adoptionism and Predestinationism, were condemned by councils, but were otherwise left unmolested. We may note, however, that the monk Gothescalch, after the condemnation of his false doctrine that Christ had not died for all mankind, was by the Synods of Mainz in 848 and Quiercy in 849 sentenced to flogging and imprisonment, punishments then common in monasteries for various infractions of the rule.

^Blötzer, J. (1910). "Inquisition". The Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved 2012-08-26. [...] the occasional executions of heretics during this period must be ascribed partly to the arbitrary action of individual rulers, partly to the fanatic outbreaks of the overzealous populace, and in no wise to ecclesiastical law or the ecclesiastical authorities.

^Lea, Henry Charles. "Chapter VII. The Inquisition Founded". A History of the Inquisition In The Middle Ages. 1. ISBN1-152-29621-3.

^Wim Van Den Doel (2010). The Dutch Empire. An Essential Part of World History. BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review. The Western belief in progress, Enlightenment thinking and the scientific revolution were elements that enabled the Western economy to develop in the nineteenth century in a way that was fundamentally different from most of the economies in the rest of the world. Europeans had not been able to sell much to the Asians in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but after the Industrial Revolution the situation was completely different, and the European textile industry, for example, was easily able to sell its cheap products throughout Asia. Improved transport methods also meant that European products could reach the Asian market at a relatively low cost. From about 1800, what historians term ‘the great divergence’ took place, which was the separation of the economic development of the Western World, on the one hand, and of almost all of Asia and Africa on the other.

^Webster, Richard A. "European expansion since 1763". ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2018-07-23. The global expansion of western Europe between the 1760s and the 1870s differed in several important ways from the expansionism and colonialism of previous centuries. Along with the rise of the Industrial Revolution, which economic historians generally trace to the 1760s, and the continuing spread of industrialization in the empire-building countries came a shift in the strategy of trade with the colonial world. Instead of being primarily buyers of colonial products (and frequently under strain to offer sufficient salable goods to balance the exchange), as in the past, the industrializing nations increasingly became sellers in search of markets for the growing volume of their machine-produced goods.

^Huntington, Samuel P. (1991). Clash of Civilizations (6th ed.). Washington, DC. pp. 38–39. ISBN978-0-684-84441-1 – via http://www.mercaba.org/SANLUIS/Historia/Universal/Huntington,%20Samuel%20-%20El%20choque%20de%20civilizaciones.pdf (in Spanish). The origin of western civilization is usually dated to 700 or 800 AD. In general, researchers consider that it has three main components, in Europe, North America and Latin America"... "However, Latin America has followed a quite different development path from Europe and North America. Although it is a scion of European civilization, it also incorporates, to varying degrees, elements of indigenous American civilizations, absent from North America and Europe. It has had a corporatist and authoritarian culture that Europe had to a much lesser extent and America did not have at all. Both Europe and North America felt the effects of the Reformation and combined Catholic and Protestant culture. Historically, Latin America has been only Catholic, although this may be changing. Latin American civilization incorporates indigenous cultures, which did not exist in Europe, which were effectively annihilated in North America, and whose importance oscillates between two extremes: Mexico, Central America, Peru and Bolivia, on the one hand, and Argentina and Chile, on the other. The political evolution and the economic development of Latin America have clearly separated from the predominant models in the North Atlantic countries. Subjectively, Latin Americans themselves are divided when it comes to identifying themselves. Some say: "Yes, we are part of the West." Others say: "No, we have our own unique culture"; and a vast bibliographical material produced by Latin Americans and North Americans exposes in detail their cultural differences. Latin America could be considered, or a sub-civilization within Western civilization, or a separate civilization, intimately related to the West and divided as to its belonging to it.

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